


The Last Psypher

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Odin Sphere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      Author's Note:  I realize that I took a lot of liberties in this story when it comes to the mechanics of psyphers.  For the purposes of this story, the Riblam absorbed both Mercedes and Ingway's phozons during and after the final battle with Onyx, and its power is what warped a perfectly normal tree into Yggrassil in the new world.  Touching the surface of the Psypher crystal shows you impressions of the souls left inside. <br/>I sincerely hope that Farli is okay with my speculation and use of OCs for exposition!  I had a lot of fun with this story. <br/><p>Written for Farli</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Last Psypher

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: I realize that I took a lot of liberties in this story when it comes to the mechanics of psyphers. For the purposes of this story, the Riblam absorbed both Mercedes and Ingway's phozons during and after the final battle with Onyx, and its power is what warped a perfectly normal tree into Yggrassil in the new world. Touching the surface of the Psypher crystal shows you impressions of the souls left inside.   
>  I sincerely hope that Farli is okay with my speculation and use of OCs for exposition! I had a lot of fun with this story.   
> 
> 
> Written for Farli

 

 

**The Last Psypher**

Amity stumbled down the slope of a gnarled root, the pads of her paws slipping against smooth virgin bark. Her tutors had betimes called her a deft young doe, and she would never have been permitted to accompany the expedition were it otherwise, but this was no exercise in the great warren of Pooka City. This was another world entire.

"Would you suffer me to carry you?" Gerhardt asked her. "I am not fain to break your people's customs, but our light grows short, and t'would be a dire thing to face the greenwood without it."

"You doubt my ears?"

"I doubt the very air we breathe, in this place! T'is empty as a tomb."

Amity's hackles rose. Not even the giants of Hel could compel her to be carted about like a pet by that insufferably well-intentioned human ass! Of all the partners she could have been assigned-

Calm. She had to be calm. The professor would not wish to see her in such a state. This was the King Oswald XVII's own Royal Geographical Survey.

"The light is of no use to us," Amity finally grumbled, once she'd managed to stop her ears from flattening against the back of her head. "We'll find the base camp. Restrain yourself from molesting my person."

"Foul-tempered little beast," Gerhardt mumbled under his breath, knowing full well that Amity could hear him. There was a reason why human and pooka traveled together on these excursions. Humans were trusted to sight any danger, while Pooka could listen for life in the darkness.

Alas, this quadrant was as quiet as all the rest, which meant that it was too quiet by far. Even Gerhardt's heavy breathing and plodding steps were a balm to Amity's soul. She yearned for the crowded, cheerful corridors of her homeland; for the reassuring thrum of vibrations in the city tunnels.

The World Tree cradled whole lakes and forests in its boughs, but its base was nearly devoid of life. Its canopy closed over the deal-lands like a second starless sky, and the survey team mapped roots as wide as imperial roadways that had never known the touch of man nor beast.

And the void was driving all of them a little mad.

Amity and Gerhardt walked in silence for some time, scribbling notes intermittently in the scratchy project shorthand.

"If you're hungry, then eat something." The pooka eventually snapped, annoyed by the grumbling Gerhardt's stomach. Her hind legs were beginning to tire. It was tiring, being unable able to see more than five paces ahead of them.

Gerhardt stopped in his tracks.

"But- I'm not."

"If you think-"

"No, I'm _not_."

The growl returned, everywhere and nowhere at once. Amity should leap, her training said to jump, but she was frozen, stopped in time and where was her quiet, she wanted it back, she-

"Gerhardt?" She said, in a small voice.

Then they were both buffeted off the side of the root, their maps and supplies scattered to the winds, and they were falling, falling, falling, and screaming, and it smelled like bones and wet fur and they were breaking through the ground, a layer of vines down below, ohgods they would dietheywoulddietheywoulddiethey-

Gerhardt grabbed her paw.

Then something warm and sharp impacted with her spine, and it all went black.

/ / /

_\- and the air was thick with clouds of phozons. The Captain thought, for one delirious moment, about how the hair stood up on the back of his arms, and the uncanny scent of ozone and seared flesh. The men could hardly believe their poor fortune. First screams from the sewers and the city falling to shambles, and now this awkward slip of a thing carving through their forces like a hot knife through butter._

But the City was older than any of them. It would take their blood and carry on. Their grandchildren would leave flowers for them underneath the regimental crest.

"Right then, lads. This is it." The Captain said. "For Titania!"

"For Titania!"

The Captain's last charge was mercifully short. His last living sight was the insectile wings of the Faerie Queen, iridescent with the glow of freed souls. And then-

/ / /

"Amity? Amity, I pray you, wake up!"

"I- I'm not dead," the pooka mumbled, tasting blood in the back of her mouth. Her- her head felt muzzy. Fuzzy. _Clouded_. She was- wasn't- hadn't she seen-

"You've got to fight." Gerhardt urged her. Shifting her head in his- lap. That was his lap. It was too warm to be stone, and there was no moss here. "I fear you've taken a blow to the head, so I dare not let you sleep.:

S- stupid human. Always trying to do things for her. A doe could take care of herself.

Amity forced her eyes open. Cold metal pressed through her fur, indenting the skin at the small of her back.

"What broke my fall, Gerhardt?"

He turned his face away from her, so that she couldn't see the extent of the damage wrought upon it by their fall. His visage was fat, and unpleasantly smooth, but it was not the fault of humans that they remained hairless all their lives, like ugly mewling newborns.

" _Gerhardt_."

"I don't want to move you."

Wait, how could she see?

Glow. It was glowing. Steady, strong pink, sturdy as the flesh of a pooka's heart. She'd fallen into some sort of dais, formed naturally of winding wood, and on it-

Amity groaned.

"Gerhardt, it's not-"

It was _in her head_.

She could not see the walls of the pit that they'd fallen into, nor was there any light at the top to guide their way.

The ground shuddered with the force of an inhuman bellow, and Amity felt shale falling as she returned to-

/ / /

_\- valkyries so thick in the sky that their wings blocked the sun, screeching and war cries and the flapping of wings. The migratory vee of their battle formation might have been intimidating on another day, a more fortunate time, but their Princesses were gone, and Odin without his Witches was a man already disarmed. The valkyries flew with honor but without direction, charging futilely into the Vanir's front line._

And the Fairy Queen rose in the western horizon, her Psypher burning bright as the morning star.

Ingway could navigate by her, if he so desired.

But he did not desire.

Would the Beast of Darkova lick Queen Mercedes' hands when he found her? Oh, yes, they'd play fetch in the gardens of Ringford, and go for walkies past Titania so that he could snarl Cornelius away from his sister! It would be _delightfully_ bucolic. The storybook adventures of a girl and her pup.

When had Ingway become such a sentimental fop? Ugh, he ought never to have inhabited the form of that straw-headed twit his sister insisted upon mooning after. It had addled his mind. Velvet, as a sort of female version of himself, _truly_ ought to have better taste.

"You there, friend or foe!"

Ingway pulled the glamour around himself without thinking. Floppy ears and hunched back molded around him like a second skin. He was a goblin and he was a man and he was a beast with teeth to rend and jaws to snap, dreaming of bones crushed beneath the forepaws of his-

"Friend! Oh, friend, good sir." Ingway smiled, and tried not to feel like he was baring fangs. "You can trust me. I'm a nice _goblin."_

Ingway fluttered pathetically around the broken corpse of a valkyrie, checking for jewelry and spare potions. Someone had sliced her pinions. The rest of her squad, dishonored, had left her behind to die.

"As you say. Mind you keep your looting to the Aesir, goblin," the Unicorn Knight warned him, before shuffling onward, a platoon of reedy Vanir guards in tow. They were moving in to capture the Aesir's forward command post.

Ingway wasn't exactly sure the heaviness in his chest was, but he thought it might have been pride.

Ah, his was a-

/ / /

Amity drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

"Gerhardt-" She wheezed, feeling her life's blood drain out of her. The light was getting dimmer. She supposed she'd died it red.

More shale fell.

"Gerhardt, do you believe in Ragnarok?"

Gerhardt looked like he wanted to clutch at her like a child's stuffed hare. Had Amity been sound of body, she might have left him. How many hours had Amity spent hating Gerhardt? She'd grow accustomed to his foolishness.

"What kind of question is that? Do I appear a credulous peasant to you?"

"Well, they're right."

"I- what?"

"We got too close. I- this _thing_ is a weapon of the Gods. I think it might have warped this place. The World Tree, and Fenriswolf. I- I can feel their memories-"

Footsteps thundered closer.

Amity might have been shaking in terror. Or shock.

Gerhardt looked at the ground.

/ / /

_"Oh, my lady is a shining star in the darkest night! Pray allow me to kneel and kiss your hand, for I could have no greater honor than to bow my head and ponder the virtue and purity of your well-formed ankles!"_

"Stop that!" Mercedes swatted at Ingway, who had recently discovered that taking Cornelius' form and using it to do poor impressions was as close as he'd ever get to destroying the man without Velvet chaining him to a tree. "That is so creepy! Turn back and tell me how I look."

Mercedes flailed a little, to emphasize exactly how _creepy it was to see Cornelius' face leering over her shoulder in the mirror._

"But gentle lady!" Ingway-turned-Cornelius assumed a wounded pose, which was completely ruined by the self-satisfied grin he was wearing. Any second now he was going to start prancing and fencing with imaginary monsters. "I told _you that your lips compare to rosebuds, and on my honor, I-"_

"Auuugh!" Mercedes' jutted her lower lip out and stomped one dainty foot. The gesture looked almost as ridiculous on the willowy, peerless body of the Faerie Queen as Ingway's body language did on Cornelius' earnest frame. "Why are you such a jerk? You'd _better_ not get your sleaze all over my best dress. We have to be ready for the banquet in ten minutes."

Looking in the mirror and seeing a woman who looked so very like her mother was almost as weird as the Cornelius thing, but Mercedes was starting to get past it. Her mother would never have been this disheveled on the night of an important diplomatic event.

"Ah, but I am _ready."_

Ingway did that shimmying thing with his hands, and Cornelius' body was duly replaced by Ingway's own lanky form, immaculately groomed and sporting an appropriate pair of fairy wings.

Too bad for him that Mercedes knew he was still a frog. A big, slimy, shape-shifting frog, with far _too convenient magical powers. And perfect hair. And that smug look. And a problem with shirts._

Um.

"Shouldn't a good Prince support _his Queen?" Mercedes demanded. A lesser man might have bowed, or whimpered, or quaked in his boots. Ingway just smirked._

"Mmm, probably." Ingway draped himself over her shoulders and began to nuzzle into her hair. "But you're a sight when you're half-dressed, and I never claimed I was a very good _prince."_

The wise, courageous, legendary Queen Mercedes of Ringford turned beet red and fluttered her wings like a teenager.

"What are you thinking!? We can't-"

"Really _, my Queen. Try to be a little more_ creative _," Ingway drawled, nudging one of the straps off of her shoulder. "Just have the servants spike their drinks and hide the clocks."_

/ / /

Fenriswolf came and went. Another survey team lost.

The heart of the World Tree sleeps and dreams of things that were, and things that are, and so many happy endings.

 

 

 


End file.
